


deadbeat

by hollow_city



Series: in this house, we eat brains (and solve murders) [1]
Category: Batman (Comics), iZombie (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Canonical Character Death, Mild Gore, Zombie AU, because zombies, just brains
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-15
Updated: 2017-04-15
Packaged: 2018-10-18 06:46:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10611444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hollow_city/pseuds/hollow_city
Summary: jason is the living embodiment of 'deadbeat son'. sure, he's a shitty son, but he's also dead. like, actually, one hundred percent, totally dead. yeah. how's he supposed to explain that?





	

**Author's Note:**

> izombie is back and season three has been amazing so far and i just had this thought... and here we are.

Jason Todd died. Everyone knows that. The second Wayne child was killed far too young. 

The second Robin died. People know that, too. The second Robin to fall out of the nest. 

He was scared, and he was disappointed. Bruce didn't save him, and he left him to die. At least, that's what he was thinking when he died. 

Jeez, he can't even say that. Not anymore. Sure, he died, but he's still alive. How in the ever loving fuck does that make any sense? 

He's still dead. He's a zombie. Zombies aren't supposed to exist, even with all of the things he and his family have seen, but he exists. So that must mean zombies exist, right? He's not really sure how to explain it, he just knows. What else would explain what's going on?

He climbed out of his own grave with sickly pale skin, white as snow hair, and a sudden immunity to any and all physical threats. He imagines that if someone were to cut his head off, he'd probably be dead for good, but he doesn't really want to test that theory. He's good with dying just once for now. 

Now Jason is  _kind_ of, sort of,  _really_ selfish. So when he clawed his way out of the six-foot hole with his name stamped on it, he didn't go home. He decided to let Bruce, Alfred, and Dick stew in their own sadness for a little longer while he tried to figure exactly why he's still alive. 

It takes him a while to actually figure out that he's still dead. He knows his skin is creepily pale and his hair is a ridiculous shade of white, but he figured that just came with the whole dying thing. It did, apparently. He didn't realize, until he took three bullets to the stomach, and didn't feel anything. Okay, yeah, he noticed that his favorite pizza place now made pizza that tasted like nothing, but he didn't really pay that much mind. He just assumed that all of that tasteless food was a side effect of dying, or something.

So, three bullets found themselves lodged in his abdomen, and he didn't really feel much. He just felt blinding rage. He couldn't control himself, and all he wanted to do was tear the petty thief to utter shreds. And he did. He beat the man to a pulp and clawed at him in a murderous haze. When he was done, even though he'd never admit it, he was scared of himself. He couldn't control his rage, and killed a man. 

Jason Todd was, in fact, the "angry Robin", but he never  _killed_ anybody before. It settled with him better than it should've, but that's not what he was worried about. He was worried about the fact that he blacked out, and barely remembered a second of it. He didn't like not having control; he never did.

So he ran. He left the body, and he ran, even though a tiny voice, that sounded suspiciously like Bruce, told him to go back. He ran, and he stayed away from the streets for a while. 

He wasn't quite sure what was wrong with him, so he thought maybe he had some new powers that came with coming back to life. 

Eventually, he decided it was time for him to go back to the streets. He found himself missing the exhilaration of beating on criminals and saving ungrateful jackasses in alleyways. So he suited up again, and he built up an obnoxious arsenal of weapons that he really didn't need. He still didn't kill, because Bruce was such a drill sergeant that he couldn't bring himself to without a tiny voice in his head yelling at him.

But the longer he lived, the worse he felt. Things were going downhill fast. He was losing chunks of days. He would black out and wake up on the floor of his shitty apartment with his tasteless bottle of shitty beer shattered on the ground beside him. He would have dizzy spells that would knock him off his feet and cause him to nearly lose his guts. He would break out sweating but would start shivering his ass off, no matter what he did. The last straw was when he stumbled in the field.

He was in the middle of maiming a guy when his senses suddenly cut out for a moment. He dropped his gun, he stumbled forward, and he lost his grip on the guy's collar. He was shoved to the ground and shot twice in the chest.

Jason Todd turned into a monster that day. Or maybe he always had been. He's not sure.

He blacked out, and his eyes turned bright red. He tore into the man, and went straight for the head. He was dead in seconds.

When he finally broke out of his murderous rage, he cried. He would never admit it, and he didn't want to, but he did. How else was he supposed to react? He never really cried. The one time he  _really_ cried was when he was watching the clock steadily approach zero. 

But there he was, blubbering like a child and frantically scrubbing the blood off his now bare hands. His gloves were discarded and his helmet was cracked and lying on the pavement beside him. Thankfully, he still had the red domino beneath it on and intact. 

When his hands were no longer red from blood, but rather that same sickly white, he stopped. But he was still crying.

He had eaten the man's brain. 

He didn't mean to, but he did. He wasn't all there for it, but he did it. And it didn't make him sick like it should've, it didn't make him take that gun that he dropped and point it at his own brain. It made him feel  _better._ He no longer felt slightly sick or cold but sweaty. He felt... okay again.

Before he could collect himself and try to come up with some half-assed excuse as to why that just happened, a woman appeared in the entrance to the alleyway. She had no shoes on, and she was wearing nothing but sweatpants and a too-big sweatshirt. Considering he was collapsed on the ground in between a bar and an apartment building, she had to have come from the apartment building. 

His eyes, that should've been swollen and aching from his relentless sobbing - but weren't, flicked up to see a window swung open. She must've heard him.

"Sir?" her voice was clear, and she didn't have a heavy Gotham accent. "Sir, are you okay?" 

She stepped closer, paying no mind to what could be on the ground, and paused in front of Jason and the body. She didn't look too shocked, which struck him as slightly strange, but that wasn't what he was focused on. He was focused on her incredibly pale skin and her white hair. She looked like him. Sure, it could've just been a style choice, and a coincidence, but it wasn't. 

Jason's hand immediately found his discarded gun, and had it pointed directly at her face before she could say another word.

"Back the fuck up before I shoot you," he ground out, biting back a wince at the hoarseness of his own voice. 

"You wouldn't shoot me," she said, her eyebrows creased with concern. "You're one of those vigilantes, right?"

He didn't respond, but lowered his gun anyway. He clicked the safety on and shoved it in the previously empty holster under his jacket. His eyes finally met hers again, and he was slightly taken back by the look she had.  _Empathy._

"It sucks, doesn't it?" she asked, crossing her arms as she tried to shield herself from the night chill. 

"What does?" he snapped, snatching his helmet from the ground. It was cracked and momentarily dysfunctional, so it would be useless to put it back on. 

"Needing the brains. Was that your first time?" she continued, stepping forward again. When she saw his hand flick towards the previously holstered gun, she stopped. 

"What the hell are you talking about?" Jason scoffed, preparing to bolt. Someone would find the body eventually, he didn't need to deal with it. 

She glanced behind her, as if to check for other people, and lowered her voice. "Do you know what you are?" When he raised his arms and shook his head with a mocking expression, she sighed, her face pinching with something akin to sadness.

"You're a zombie."

Jason stared at her for a moment, before laughing. It echoed off the bricks surrounding them and sent chills down her spine. It wasn't a humored laugh, it was cold, bitter, and sharp. He suddenly stopped, and was a lot closer than she remembered him being just a second ago.

"I should throw you in Arkham," he growled, paused, before hesitantly adding, "you have two minutes to explain before I pump you full of lead."

She took a step back, and raised her hands in surrender.

"You died, right?" His eye twitched. "And then you came back. I'm sure your hair didn't look like that before, and unless you were an incredibly antisocial recluse, your skin probably wasn't like that either." His eye twitched again. "You needed to eat that brain, or you would've gone off the deep end. That's what it felt like, right?"

He stared at her for a solid minute, before getting even closer, and further into her personal space. "And let me guess, you're a zombie, too?"

"Lower your voice!" she hissed, before nodding. "Yeah."

The word swirled around in his mind, and he didn't want that to be the truth. Why the fuck would that be the truth? He couldn't possibly be a god-fucking-damn  _zombie._ There was no way.

He could accept people who could fly, people who could run laps around the world in four seconds, and aliens from far off planets, so why couldn't accept that?

"I get it. It doesn't make a lot of sense. But you are." She shrugged. 

"Why would I believe you?" his voice was suddenly serious, and slightly cautious. It made sense, he just wished it wouldn't.

"Shoot me," she demanded. His eyebrows shot up, and he snorted lightly. "I'm serious, dude. Shoot me."

"I'm not gonna shoot you," he scoffed. She crossed her arms tighter and leaned closer, her nose turned up. After a minute of staring at each other, he finally sighed and pulled one of his guns out, clicked the safety off, and a fired a shot into her leg. 

She stiffened immediately, but didn't cry out. In fact, no pain showed on her face at all. Instead, her eyes burned bright red, and her breathing turned ragged. Her movements were jerky as she reached down and dug the bullet out with her bare hand. She dropped it on the ground, and slowly, her eyes and breathing evened out.

"Holy mother of fuck," Jason breathed, shoving the gun back in its holster and casting his eyes towards the sky. 

Of course. A zombie. A motherfucking zombie.

"Yeah," she nodded in agreement. "I'm Liv, by the way. Liv Moore. I'm a zombie." She uncrossed her arms to extend a pale hand in his direction. 

 _Oh, fuck it all_ , he thought, as he grabbed her hand. 

"Jason Todd. I guess I'm a zombie, too."

_Fuck._

**Author's Note:**

> not yet proofread because it's one am, and i've gotta wake up at three to go somewhere (aka; i don't know how to manage my own life)


End file.
